


have i always looked this way?

by Anonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Abuse of the Respawn Mechanic, Angst, Blood and Violence, Choking, Death, Depersonalization, Gore, Pandora's Vault, Self-Harm, Self-Induced Vomiting, Self-Mutilation, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicide, Suicide Attempts, Thoughts of Autocannibalism, Unhealthy Interpersonal Relationships, effects of solitary confinement, mild body horror, non-con elements, prison arc dream, temporary major character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:22:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29345067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: ...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...He wrenched the clock off the wall, considered the halfway mark of the sun and the moon, knew midday usually brought the Warden on his rounds to check in on him, and threw it into the lava. The slow, monotonous ticking choked and spluttered into melted wood and melted circuits and melted redstone as the glowing wall of molten rock swallowed it whole.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sam | Awesamdude
Comments: 34
Kudos: 262





	1. choking games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Criss cross apple sauce  
> Spiders running up your back  
> Put your arms around my neck  
> I’ll only go to sleep for a second.'  
>  _choking games_ by nicole dollanganger
> 
> Work title from ' _have I always looked this way'_ by bulldog eyes  
> Chapter title from ' _choking games'_ by nicole dollanganger

_...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick..._

He wrenched the clock off the wall, considered the halfway mark of the sun and the moon, knew midday usually brought the Warden on his rounds to check in on him, and threw it into the lava. The slow, monotonous ticking choked and spluttered into melted wood and melted circuits and melted redstone as the glowing wall of molten rock swallowed it whole. 

His hand followed it, inching into the lava halfway to his elbow. Skin dripped into wax, sloughing off and blackening, thin bones standing stark white and then charcoaled where they slopped into nothing but burnt slime. He didn't even flinch. Just drew his arm back to see the hollowed out, skeletal, empty visage of remaining ligaments, snapped taught and slipped free, limp and clung sadly like old elastic to what remained. 

The Warden would be inside any moment to handle the breach. 

He counted the seconds in his head, hummed, rocked back and forth on his heels and tapped along his jaw with the hand that he hadn't mangled beyond repair. It was taking longer than usual. Frowning he tilted his head, listened for the crunch of mechanisms of redstone engaging gears to turn and extend the bridge, of the distant draining suction of the lava being lowered. The most he heard was the distant, throaty chime of an elder guardian. 

He really hated the sound of bells. It was nothing like _Do Not Burn_. The clock was a cheery, chirpy little sound compared to the tolls that resounded through the obsidian and sent his limbs heavy and fingers dulled. 

Sam-- The Warden would be here any moment. 

Gritting his teeth he prodded at his arm, watched the phantom jump of muscles, felt none of it, and continued to pick at it. Peeled off remaining layers, chipped bone free and dropped it onto the obsidian where it clattered and rolled. Considered for a moment slipping a piece of the cooked flesh between his teeth-- He hadn't had anything like that in so long. It smelled like an overdone barbeque somehow, like a charbroiled pig, and his mouth watered with the distant memory of eating anything besides raw potatoes. 

He laughed, breathy and empty, eyes rolling back up to the lava wall. He waited. 

Maybe he shouldn't have burned _Do Not Burn_. Sam always got angry when he had to replace the clock. Disappointed even. But he always replaced it. He always came in to replace it. And if he hurt himself like this, reached past the barrier; Sam always came in to handle that too. 

He always came back eventually. 

He frowned, fingers tapping faster against his face, chin cupped in his palm. Nails dug into the flesh just under his eye, pulled the eyelid down, and he _nearly_ drove his fingers into it, straight through and down to itch at his brain. Instead, he dropped his arm, let both hang limp at his side. 

He would be back. The Warden would be back. 

"He'll be back..." he rasped to _Do Not Burn_. 

The clock didn't answer and he poked at the lava, teeth grit at the hiss of burning flesh. The Warden sometimes took a bit to get to him. He had a life outside these walls. He used to have one too. Sometimes, when the clock showed the moon, he would sit cross legged in the water basin, and pick over those little pictures in his head. 

The ones where people smiled at him. The ones where they clapped him on the shoulder and laughed and where he laughed too. He tried to imitate the huffing, breathy sound and it choked up into a cough that he buried into his fist. Smiling was weird. It drew his cheeks up and felt like his mouth was splitting his face in two. 

The Warden smiled sometimes. Nothing like the way the people in his memories did. But small, barely lifted at the edges, and only ever when he listened and was good and didn't do the bad things that the Warden told him not to do. Burning the clock wouldn't get Sam to smile. Burning himself wouldn't get the Warden to smile either. But it would bring the Warden here. And that was all that mattered. 

It had already been two cycles of the clock since he had seen the Warden. Since he had seen anyone. His stomach more hunched over and shriveled up than it had been in a while. Even when the raw potatoes made him kneel over the edge of the water basin and lose most of his meal into it. 

Sometimes he made himself throw it up on purpose. The stinging, acrid, acid bit at his throat, stung his eyes, his nostrils, full body heaves and spasms of his diaphragm and ribs; it was thrilling somehow. It reminded him of a fight. It reminded him of crying. And jamming his own fingers down his throat wasn't something the Warden could stop him from doing. 

The Warden could stop him from doing a lot though. 

Dying permanently was one of them. He had tried that one frequently. So many different ways. And they always said, you could never drown yourself. That your body would stop you from holding your head underwater, that you'd shoot up and gasp in air before you swallowed water. 

That wasn't true. 

He had drowned in the water basin at least five times. Upside down, heel lodged against the side, arms pressed to the edges, nails dug in, until he had breathed in water and kept breathing. One time he had merely dunked his head in and let the water flood his nose and his throat until it went dark. 

He always woke up though, sometimes to the Warden, most times to no one.

After the first few times of waking up to Sam stood over him, the Warden seemed to figure out what he was doing and stopped entering his cell every time. 

But the Warden would come now. He would. He definitely would. He had to. He had to. He had to. Someone had to come eventually. Someone had to come for him. Someone had to-- 

The low whine left him before he knew where the sound was coming from. He wrapped his still intact hand around his throat and stared at the ruined one. Had it been for nothing? 

Stumbling for the water basin he buried his arm up to the elbow into it and it _burned_. He followed it, until he had sunk into the water, until his ears were swamped and closed off from the rest of the world and he folded himself up in the cool embrace. Good arm wrapped around himself, other floated in front of him, barely visible in the dim light that made its way down to him. 

It was quiet down here. 

His chest burned, vision dotting and swimming and dancing with color and he latched onto every instance of it. He hadn't seen green like that in so long. Seen purples and blues. He hadn't seen anything besides black and orange and grey, the greens of the Warden, and the occasional purple-reds of bruising. 

He missed the sky. He missed water. This was the closest he could get to it. And if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was in the sea. That he had rolled his way off a sandy shore and into the grips of the ocean, that he would be tossed to bits against stones and the silt. 

His lungs _ached_. Giddiness bubbled up under his ribs and he wanted to laugh, felt it burble and build under his sternum. The colors grew into a swarm under his eyelids and stayed even when he opened them. Water pressed in on all sides, cradled him and caressed him and he missed the casual little brushes of fingers and hands and other people. He thought about the last time he had been hugged and he sucked in a lungful of water in a cascade of bubbles. 

Flailing he clawed at the sides of the basin, hand finding the rim as he pulled himself free, choking and spluttering, collapsing against the edge and coughing. Chest rattling, wheezes leaving him like his lungs had been peppered full of holes. He forgot his other arm was unusable until he tried to heave himself out with it and his vision whited out. 

He didn't expect the hands under his armpits or the person that hauled him out of the basin and dropped him onto the floor. 

"Drowning yourself again?" 

He panted, shivering, chest still spasming with small sputtering coughs. Spit and water coated his lips, drool and phlegm sticky against his chin. 

He blinked, eyes lolling, trying to find anything to latch onto, vision blurred and messy. Lashes clumped and heavy, he swiped at his face, tried to push himself up, and collapsed, mangled arm pinned beneath him. The low whine that left him more animal than human. 

"What did you do to yourself now?" 

Hands hauled him up, propped him against the wall and patted his shoulders, fingers moving down in a trail that burned like fire and magma to grab at his arm. 

"I'll have to reset this."

He shook his head, eyes downcast, centered on the golden chestplate in front of him. Resetting when it wasn't himself doing it was-- He didn't like that. It felt like-- It felt like dying for real. Like he wouldn't come back. Like that was it. Like he-- 

He was pulled up to his feet, turned around so his spine curved against the ungiving metal of armor, arms wrapped around him to hold him up. Shivering he clung to the arm around his waist, trembled as fingers curled around his throat, and it had no right being _intimate_. It felt like he was being held close, like he wasn't alone, like he wasn't going to always be all alone in here. He swallowed, adam's apple raking along the cage of a hand on his jugular. It just sat there warm and raspy against water-slick skin. 

He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, imagined the thumb that brushed along the pulse point in his neck had a much different context. That his arm wasn't half-melted off, that he didn't feel like an exposed nerve, that his throat didn't burn and itch, that he didn't breath in raspy, rattling pants where water coated the edges of his lungs. 

The Warden always took far too long to kill him. 

"Don't burn yourself like that again or I won't bring your clock back next time." 

The order rumbled under his shoulders, ghosted over the shell of his ear, whispered more than spoken, and he nodded, small and jerky. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. He woul-- 

The fingers tightened and he jerked, heels kicking at the ground, hand working to pry off the arm trapping him, shooting up to claw at the thing cutting off his air. Drowning was almost fun when he did it. But this wasn't fun. His eyes watered, chest rising and refusing to fall, he pushed back against the stalwart wall of muscle and bone and flesh behind him. It felt like he was burning up, face hot, eyes hot, chest hotter as nothing slipped past the slow collapse of his throat. 

Shushes breathed against the crown of his head, the arm wrapped around him holding tighter until he thought his ribs might pop inwards and stab every organ along the way. He heard himself choking and gasping like retrospect, like it wasn't him dying and someone else instead. It was hard to stay grounded, head drifting, gut heavy with the crackling warmth of oxygen deprivation, and he found himself sinking back against the body behind him. Fight slipping from his limbs with the dark ringing and swamping and filling his vision. 

For a moment, the face pressed into his hair wasn't the Warden's, the obsidian was sunlight and trees and a forest, the arms around him weren't so strong they could snap him in two with a whim. The hand wrapped around his throat more a scarfed arm, a playful tackle into the grass and rolling down a hill where the sky flickered in and out until he came to a stop at the bottom and laughed up at the clouds. 

He smiled. 

And then, like so many times before, he died. 

There was always a terrifying moment, suspended in the endless emptiness, the vastness of time and space, where consciousness nearly wasn't. Where his thoughts snagged against his last moments, before they snapped back to the living ones, and he considered; maybe it wouldn't be so bad to stay here. 

He snapped up, panting, hands flying to his throat, as his eyes darted around the cell. 

_...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick..._

He sighed, carded his hands through his hair and sagged over his knees, pressed his forehead to them and listened to the clock on the wall. The Warden had left him again, but _Do Not Burn_ was back at least. Apparently, the Warden had also waited until he had respawned, had placed him under a blanket on the stone floor and tucked him in. He ran his fingers over the raspy linen, scratchy and flimsy and barely anything compared to what he had before all of this. 

It was the first blanket he had been given since being put in here. 

Reaching up for his throat again, he wrapped his fingers around it, rested them there, stared at the far wall, and listened to the clock tick away in its plodding, endless march.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags to be added as I figure out exactly where this is going. Right now it's more snippet and less plot/coherent.
> 
> Also yes, Sam is 6'8, or whatever they thought he was before, in this.


	2. and we, by our own design are helpless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You think the forces have control  
> Well, there are no forces  
> And they have no control  
> Yes, it's just you and me  
> We fear anything that looks like the sun  
> And we, by our own design are helpless  
> This is the beginning"  
>  _Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast_ by the flaming lips

"You haven't been drinking enough." 

He stared at the wall, standing stalwart in the corner, arms limp at his sides. 

"Dream..." 

He blinked. That was him, right? He glanced at the Warden out of the corner of his eye and then looked back at the wall.

"Come here." 

He didn't move. He swallowed, mouth dry, throat scratchy, teeth sticky with long dried spit. If the Warden shoved water down his throat, he wouldn't drink it.

He wanted his clock back. The Warden hadn't given him a new one yet. He couldn't tell how many days it had been since he hadn't had his clock, but he would die from dehydration before he let a single drop of liquid past his lips. He shouldn't have burned it. He knew that. He shouldn't have burned it. He wasn't even sure why he kept doing it. He shouldn't have burned it. He shouldn't ha--

Fingers dug into his chin, wrenched his head to the side and his shoulders followed, the rest of him turning with them. He kept his eyes darted off to the side, watched whatever wall he could focus on and didn't look at the Warden. He knew he would only see disappointment and disapproval and he didn't like the way he could read everything on someone's face. The way people's eyes were so expressive and reflective and wholly _unnatural_. 

A thumb, nail and all, wormed its way between his lips and pressed against his teeth and he had half a mind to bite it, to sink his teeth deep enough they clicked against bone and all he could taste was red. But he knew that wouldn't end well, that wouldn't get him his clock back. It worried its way under his front teeth, pushed up and pressed in so hard he either lost them or opened his mouth. His jaw unwound in a relenting give and he tasted sulfur and soot and the salt-tinged tell of skin. 

It was humiliating. Like he was some dog and he had eaten something he shouldn't have, and the Warden was making sure he actually spit it out instead of swallowing. 

He kept his eyes buried into the far wall, avoided the figure in his peripheral, kept his fists limp at his sides and resisted the urge to bite down. He really wanted to. He really, really wanted to. It would be more than easy to just-- 

"If you bite me you won't get that clock back."

He went rigid, spine straightening. Standing perfectly, deadly, stock still as the thumb slipped over his tongue, further and further back until it was uncomfortable, until he felt like he might actually gag. It pressed down, hard enough he whined, and he nearly reached up to wrench the hand out of his mouth, but he needed that clock-- He needed _Do Not Burn_ back. 

Saliva pooled thick and heavy on his tongue and in-between his gums and behind his teeth and he swallowed against it. But it was hard, with the hand partially lodged where it was, and with the way the Warden tipped his head down, chin falling towards his sternum. Drool slipped from his lips and his face burned. 

"You're not completely dehydrated at least…" 

The hand retreated, tongue freed, he rubbed at his jaw and mused over the taste that lingered. Scrubbed at the remaining line of spit that had stuck fast to his chin and swiped the shiny liquid off his fingers and onto his jumpsuit. He stared at the new stains and didn't look up. 

"Have you eaten at all recently?" 

He threw up his last attempt at a meal. So, no. 

"What do you want to eat?" 

His brow furrowed. He assumed he was supposed to say potatoes. That was the usual. That was the norm. He didn't know what this was. He didn't even know what he was supposed to ask for. Was there a right answer? Was he supposed to say something besides potatoes? 

"There has to be something you miss eating." 

And the Warden's voice was gentle somehow, soft and pleasant and he wasn't used to that. It curled up in his ear and he already missed the sound of it. Was he supposed to speak back though? He didn't know if he was supposed to actually answer the question. Or if this was like the other times. When he had stood in the corner, faced the wall, and the Warden had talked at him. Asked him what he had done to Tommy and then recounted everything he had done, like the Warden already knew all the answers without him saying a word. 

Maybe it was a game like that. And he had gotten good at figuring out the games they played. His role was pretty easy usually. He had to stand there and not say anything and follow orders and then he would win. Or… at least he wouldn't lose. 

He stared at the ground beneath his feet; bare and bruised and stained where he hadn't even bothered to bathe himself since his clock had been gone. 

He licked his lips, eyes darting up and then immediately retreating. It was too much. He couldn't-- He didn't like seeing their face anymore. He didn't like seeing their eyes. He didn't like seeing their eyes. He didn't like seeing their-- 

"If you don't tell me, I'll just bring you the usual." 

His breath stuttered, hands clenching and unclenching and he tugged at the collar of the jumpsuit, pulled at the neckline and balled his fists in it. He just had to answer the question. But what was the right answer? He didn't even know what he missed eating. Food more a memory of dust and ash than anything he cared about. 

Maybe he had liked breakfast food...

He tried to remember what that consisted of and it was a dulled and sloppy memory of colors and less shapes, saccharine sweet and savory, some kind of dough and maybe eggs, but he couldn't place them perfectly. The exact names slipped from his fingers and his breath hitched. 

What did he used to like to eat? What did he-- He couldn't remember that. He couldn't-- Why couldn't he remember that? 

"Eggs..." he managed, voice small and dry, entirely foreign in his ears. 

"Okay, I'll bring you some in a bit." 

He frowned. How long was a bit? Was it a long time? Would he not be back soon? Would he be back in an hour? Or the next day? He couldn't track time without his clock… 

"I'll have a new clock for you too, but you have to drink some water first."

He didn't move. Did he mean right now? Glancing at him, he figured the Warden meant in the moment and not later. The cauldron was far away though. All the way over near the other wall. He would have to pass by him to get there. 

He started the trek across the stone, steps fumbling, unsure where he had kept himself stood still at the corner. The soles of his feet felt raw, the obsidian less than forgiving against the bare skin of them. Every reset skinned off the built up callouses and he had to start at square one, had to reharden them to the rough surface of the cell. 

He had thought about asking for shoes at first and scrapped the idea when he didn't even get a bed or a pillow, when he only got one jumpsuit and not even the decency of underwear or an undershirt. Shoes would be a luxury he didn't need. 

The chilled rim of the cauldron became a crutch for him as he nearly collapsed into it, elbows locking and knees wobbled and rickety with the headache pounding at his skull. And maybe he hadn't realized how much he hadn't eaten or drank until he had to actually move and pretend to be a person. Cupping water in his palms he brought it up to his lips, tipped them, and drank. 

He forgot the Warden was even there for a moment, everything simmering down to the liquid in his palms as he scooped up more, and more, until it felt like he was near to vomiting it all back up. If it got his clock back he would split himself open at the seams with it if he had to. Drown himself standing up, if it meant he'd get that clock back on the wall. He'd-- 

A hand caught his wrist, wrenched his hands down, and the water splattered back into the cauldron with a sickening scatter. He tensed, eyes locked on the fingers around his wrist. 

"That's enough." 

He panted, eyes flicking up to the Warden and then back to the water. He could just barely see his reflection, face still shiny, lips still slightly parted, and he looked everywhere but his own eyes. 

He didn't relax again until the grip left him, until he could draw his arms back to himself and leave them useless at his sides. A hand ruffled his hair and he leaned into it. 

"I'll be back." 

When? _When?_ How long? He didn't have his clock. He couldn't tell how long without it. And what if he never came back? What if he was all alone here forever? What if he was alone? What if he was left alone? 

He twisted his hands into the fabric of his jumpsuit and hunched into himself. He needed that clock back. He needed _Do Not Burn_ back. He needed-- 

"Wait..." he breathed, quiet. 

So quietly, he was afraid the Warden had missed it for the strike of armored boots against the stone, for the exit he was making through the obsidian maw of his home. The shift of armor sent him stepping back, heart rabbiting it's way up his throat and chest tightening. 

"What?" 

"I-- The clock…" 

"I'll have to bring it back with the food." 

"But--" 

"Is there a problem, Dream?" The Warden asked, voice warm, too warm, far too warm. "Is everything okay?" 

He nodded, vigorously, enthusiastically. 

"Are you sure?" 

His brow furrowed. If he answered truthfully… If he admitted he couldn't be _'okay'_ without his clock… The Warden was his friend, right? Something like that at least. He wouldn't-- That wouldn't be used against him, would it? 

"I need the clock..." 

"Why?" The Warden asked. 

"It helps."

"With what?" 

He tapped his fingers against his thigh, against his jaw and his face, and pulled at the skin of his cheek. Tugged and twisted and kneaded against the press of his skull beneath the muscle and skin, the faint impression of his teeth under it all. 

"What does it help with?" Footsteps echoed the question, the Warden drawing closer with them. 

He tensed, familiar with only a few things when the Warden stepped up close. Either a fist, fingers, or being manhandled. Occasionally he would get a pat on the shoulder, a hand tousling his hair, but it was hard to tell when that was going to happen and when everything else would. 

"Dream…" 

He blinked, his name sliding and sitting awkwardly against his ears. 

"What does it help with?" 

And the Warden sounded annoyed, voice more monotone, chilled, empty, back to how it usually was and he could tell he was doing something wrong here, that he hadn't done something right, that he needed to fix it. He needed to fix it. He needed to--

"Knowing when you'll come back..." he mumbled, eyes downcast. 

The Warden laughed and he flinched, glanced up and accidentally met his eyes, and he couldn't look away once he had. 

"And if I don't come back?" 

His breath stuttered. He had to come back. He had to come back. There was no one else. There was no one else. If the Warden didn't come back then he was all alone. He would be all alone… 

He shook his head. Shook it again, and his ears burned under the scrutiny. 

"You'd be all alone, wouldn't you?" The Warden said, low and measured, stepping closer, slotting himself into the yawning chasm of space between him and everything else. "But you left Tommy all alone out there though, didn't you?" 

He grit his teeth. He had. He had left him all alone out there. Had orchestrated it that way even. Deliberately. It was easier that way. It had been easier to control him that way. Control him so he could-- So he could… It had something to do with L'Manberg, with the server. It had something to do with all of them... He couldn't-- But he couldn't-- What was the reason again? 

"Why should I come back then?" 

He licked his lips, kneaded at his jaw and tapped his fingers over his mouth. There wasn't any reason the Warden _should_ come back. It was just his job. It was his duty. Something about loyalty to the position and all that. Stalwart in his patrol. The good little soldier. But who's orders was he even following? He had commissioned the prison to be built by the Warden, right? So… was it his orders? Then why would he be in here and not out there? 

His eyes darted over the floor, gathering pieces of the invisible puzzle. 

There had to be a reason for the Warden to come back here. There had to be. He had to find one. That was the game then. Like when he had made Tommy throw his armor into the hole and blow it up. That game had been obedience. About listening, following through, about the kid understanding he couldn't just do whatever he wanted. This one though, he wasn't sure what this one was...

"I need you to come back..." he settled on after too long, the truth heavy and tasting like iron on his tongue. 

The Warden nodded. "Then I'll be back in a bit." 

He watched him leave, nearly considered throwing himself out of the door after him, under the lava, burning alive beneath it instead of watching the makeshift trap snap shut again. The distant toll of an elder guardian kept him rooted in place and he rubbed at his ears, fresh fatigue swamping his limbs, fingers dragged back down to his sides and he swayed on his feet. 

Stumbling for the blanket he had left, neatly folded and tucked up into the corner, he grabbed onto it with shaking fingers, held it close to his chest and folded himself up against the wall and floor. Knees close to his chest he wrapped the wool around his shoulders and stared blankly at the rest of his room. Nothing moved or shifted or changed. It was stagnant. Always still and deadly quiet besides the own harsh drags of his breaths. Fisting his hands into the blanket he pulled it tighter around himself, rasped his fingertips over the texture. 

It was warm. Nearly too warm. The lava already heated the place up enough, a blanket wasn't exactly necessary. But it scratched against the back of his neck, settled over him like a flimsy embrace, and the pattern was still something new to look at. Compared to all the old, all the same, all the monotonous drag of the rest of it all. The blanket was the most interesting thing in a long time. 

He didn't dare burn it. 

He looked to the spot where the clock usually hung. 

"Tick… tick… tick… tick…" he imitated, as if _Do Not Burn_ was already here again, already chirping away, happy and care-free. 

He looked at the lava, at the slipping sliding luminous wall of it. The Warden would be back. He would be back. He would be back. He would be back...


	3. and in five years from now, i'll be living in hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "And in five years from now, I’ll be living in hell  
> In ten years from now, I might as well be dead  
> When I wake up at night, I'm floating above  
> The sheets on my bed  
> I’ve got no use for time, I’ve got enough  
> Give me what I want and leave me alone"  
>  _everything is going to hell_ by Teen Suicide
> 
> You know what you're getting into at this point.  
> The narration will mildly deteriorate over time. If that's distressing, this is a heads up.

Tommy still hadn't come back after the first time. 

He supposed that was fair. He supposed that made sense. Most of them didn't even come to visit _once_. He couldn't expect a repeat visit with that kind of track record. Ironically, coincidentally, poetically… Tommy had been the first one to see him since everything folded in on itself. 

He wondered if he still even looked the same as he had then. He wondered if he sounded the same. He wondered if he _was_ the same. 

Sometimes, he stared down at his reflection in the water basin and prodded at his face and wondered if it was really him reflected back. It didn't feel like it was. Sometimes, it felt like a stranger.

Like someone else had taken up residence in this skin and he was merely the stilted, awkward thief left behind. His limbs didn't feel like they lined up quite right, he felt too tall and too short, he felt too large and too small, he felt stretched thin and like his skin was too baggy all at once. 

The headaches were an unexpected development as well. 

They had only started recently. Driven into the corner of his eye and wrapped around the whole socket like a hand squeezing and threatening to pop the thing right out of his skull. The lava and glowstone hurt to look at whenever they started, nearly sent him vomiting when he was in the thick of them, and the way it sent scatters of spots and static over his vision, crawling like insects, made his fingers twitch to dig them out. 

He thought about telling the Warden about them. That today it had gotten so bad he had actually stabbed his eye out. Had driven the corner of a book, mangled and bent and twisted into a makeshift dagger, so far into the back of his socket that he had blacked out and woken up. 

The headache had been gone though, thankfully. The book hadn't reset as conveniently as he had though. 

The pages were still coated in blood, dripping and sticky with it, and he pawed through it, salvaged what he could and tucked the writing into a different one. If Tommy ever came back he had to have something to give to him after all...

He peeled the cover off the blood smattered remains with the pop of hand-done stitching. Pressed it into the obsidian, folded it down further, wrapped it into itself until it curled up into a rudimentary point, the corner still shiny and slick with mucus and tissue. He ran his thumb along it, flicked the viscera onto the ground and turned the point towards his thigh. 

Maybe he was bored. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he should stop jabbing things into himself. He knew it made the Warden sad. Or something like that. It was hard to get a solid read on him most of the time.

Doing things like this got the Warden to stick around for longer than usual anyway. The Warden would stay to inspect the wounds, assess if they could be dressed or needed to be reset completely. He preferred when dressings were applied, when it took more time, when the cut or the stab or the bite mark he had bit into his forearm or palm was wrapped up in bandages, slowly and methodically. But it was rare for the Warden to find him and make that assessment. 

Usually the Warden was efficient, clinical, would see how far he had mangled himself and reset him with a kind of cold efficacy. 

But he had been trying so hard not do the kinds of things that disappointed the Warden recently. After getting his blanket and the meal of food he had been able to ask for and after the Warden had been visiting more frequently and bringing more things with him each time-- He was trying to be better. 

It was hard though. He tried not do things that the Warden could find evidence of and if he did, he would erase it before the clock showed the times when the Warden usually made his appearance. 

He was really trying though. He really was. But-- 

His hand flinched down, the grinding click of the lava receding had him abandoning the beginning of his endeavor however. Sent him swiping the blood off his hands in the water basin and tossing the evidence as far away from himself as he could. He turned to see who was coming to his cell today, knew it was probably the Warden, and bounced on the balls of his feet, fingers twitching against his palm. 

"Hello, Dream!" 

It was Bad apparently. Unexpected, but not unwelcome. The seemingly ever chipper demon had to awkwardly stoop in the space and he watched him out of his peripherals, kept his eyes trained on the clock and tried not to show how fast his heart was beating over the fact that someone had come to see him. 

Someone had actually come to visit him. 

He hadn't expected a visitor today and he wasn't even sure where he should start, if he should say hello back, if Bad wanted to see what he had been writing, if he should ask how George and Sapnap and all the others were doing, if any of them missed him, ask why none of them had visited-- He still didn't know why none of them had come to see him. He should probably ask why none of them had come to see him. He didn't know why they hadn't v--

"It's been a bit, hasn't it?" 

He nodded, eyes glued to _Do Not Burn_. "Yeah… you're the first person to visit me in a while..." 

"Oh, well… I see you have a clock to keep time. That's pretty cool." 

"Yeah… I had some books too, but I… I burned some of them…"

He had also used some of them to hurt himself. He hoped Bad didn't see the one he had thrown in the corner. If the Warden knew he was using them like that he might finally take them all away. He didn't want them to be taken away. He liked the books. He could write in them. He liked writing in them. He liked watching the pages curl up and blacken and disappear when he burned them too. The warmth of that against his fingertips, the way it blistered the skin of his palms if he held it in his hands while it went into death throes. But he really liked writing in them. He hoped Bad didn't tell the Warden. 

He tapped at the clock, adjusted the frame, tapped at it again, finger nail _tick-tacking_ sharply against the wood. 

"What are you doing? Is this what you do in your free time?" 

"Yeah…" 

He turned to Bad when he heard the other shuffle around, the demon's eyes scanning over the items scattered around the space. 

"This isn't so bad... You got some stuff here. That's cool." 

"Yeah. It's cool…" He parroted, the word swishing around on his tongue awkwardly. 

Bad frowned and it was measurably easier to hold eye contact with him, eyes blank, inhuman, but warm somehow. "How're you doing though? You like it in here?" 

He nodded and glanced away. "Yeah, it's really good. I get… potatoes. They're raw…" 

He didn't say it as a complaint. Just as a fact. He hoped Bad didn't go to the Warden and say he was unhappy with the food. Sometimes, the Warden brought him a different food. Like the eggs. Like the small bit of dried steak. Like the shred of overcooked chicken. Table scraps compared to the potatoes, but he liked those. He didn't want the Warden to think he was ungrateful. 

"Oh. That's… good?" 

He nodded. It was good. It was better than it was. The beginning had been mostly him being uncooperative and the Warden having to remind him that he was supposed to be here. That he wasn't supposed to leave. That he shouldn't want to leave. That he had to be here. That he had to listen and do what the Warden said. 

But the first few days he had been here-- He remembered it like it had happened in the distance, like it hadn't been him. That bared teeth feral little thing hadn't been him. It couldn't have been. He would never curl his lip and snarl at the Warden like that. He wouldn't try to swing at him or grab his weapons or try to escape. That wasn't him. That hadn't been him... 

"I tried to get out the first few days…"

He had. He remembered that much. When the Warden still had a name and so did he. When he had thought himself clever enough to outsmart him, when he had made it across the bridge. When he had his leg broken clean in two for the attempt, snapped right out from under his skin and into open air like nothing, like the Warden had merely cracked a twig under his heel. 

He remembered being dumped back in the cell and his other knee shattered. He remembered being left there, unable to move. He had been too prideful to beg at first. Not until he couldn't feel anything besides pain, not until he couldn't reach food or water or stand or move or do anything besides lay there. 

That first reset still stuck around. Stayed with the way a foot had driven into the side of his face and kept pushing until he couldn't hear anything, until he had _felt_ his skull split and splatter at the sides. The sound still gnawed at his ears, when it was too quiet, when he thought maybe he was still trapped under a boot heel, dying in slow motion. 

The second time he had tried to escape the Warden had let him get far enough he thought maybe he would make it. That had been stupid of him. He didn't get to leave unless the Warden let him. He found that out when a hand had grabbed his wrist, wrenched his arm so far up behind his back his shoulder had slid from the socket, torn further and further until the Warden had nearly ripped it from him entirely. That reset had been similar to how the others went now, hands wrapped around his throat, thumbs dug so far into his jugular it carved inwards and he choked on blood before he lost air. 

The third time he hadn't even made it out of the room. He had merely chipped off a large enough chunk of obsidian it slid against his palm like a dagger. Had planned on sinking it into the Warden's neck and shoving it so deep it tickled the man's spine and left him paralyzed. The Warden caught him before he could do anything. Gutted him alive with the makeshift blade and left him on the stone, twitching and shaking and staring at his own intestines. 

It took far too long to reset that time and he still woke up sometimes, curled around his middle, arms wrapped around his midsection as if half of him was still spilled out in front of him and aching. 

He had quickly learned that with TNT and an axe he was powerful, but here, he was an ant for all the ways the Warden could pry open his carapace and splash around his insides if he wanted to. It had been stupid to try to leave anyway. He belonged here.

"I'm sorry... I mean, you did do a lot of bad stuff and that got you in here." 

He nodded, the motion familiar, the Warden had him do it a lot and it felt more habit than tic at this point. "That's true…" 

He had. He had done a lot. The Warden didn't let him forget it. The day after Tommy visited he had told him what he did, the Warden running down the list like he had cracked open his skull again and read off every deed. And more. Things he hadn't even remembered he had done. An endless bullet pointed chart of how much he deserved to be in here and why he should never leave. 

It made a logical amount of sense. It made too much sense. It all made so much sense. 

"And you'll have a lot of time to think about what you did." 

"Yeah, I've been thinking… and thinking and thinking." He trailed off, eyes darting to Bad and then back to the floor. 

He paced over to the water basin, dipped his hand in it and then made his way all the way back to the clock. 

"About what?" Bad asked.

He mused the water between his fingertips, watched it shine and shimmer, looked at the clock and wondered if his skin had looked different under sunlight or if it was about the same as glowstone and lava.

"Just thinking…" 

He thought about a lot of things. He thought about leaving. Not the room, not here, but leaving as a concept, as a fantasy. He knew it wasn't possible, it was an intangible whim. But sometimes he liked to think about it when he was bored. Tried to remember-- Imagine what grass felt like under his feet, what the air had tasted like, the exact shape of birds silhouetted against the sun, what the sunlight had felt like against his shoulders...

He thought about dying too. Sometimes he thought about Tommy. He thought about George and Sapnap. He thought about Eret and Puffy and the kingdom and he thought about L'Manberg and Wilbur and Technoblade and he thought about the community house and music discs and he thought about Spirit and he thought about Punz and Callahan and Alyssa and Ponk and ~~Sam~~. He thought about Dream and said the name just to remember what it sounded like out loud. 

The Warden said the name sometimes too, but it was riddled with gaps, times where he went so long without hearing it he forgot how the syllable formed against his lips...

"How long's your sentence? Do you know how long it is?" 

He knew. The Warden reminded him all the time. "Forever." 

Bad hissed through his teeth and the noise rattled like dried insect carapaces. "Oh-- Well, I mean… Forever's not that long. I mean-- You know… You've got this clock at least." 

He nodded, tapping the rim of it. "Yeah...I like to watch it and when it's halfway, I'm happy." 

It meant the Warden would either visit for the day or not. In cases like this, it meant someone was coming to see him. On bad days it meant nothing, no one, and that he would be alone until the next time it was halfway. 

"I'll watch it with you," Bad offered. 

He didn't tear his eyes away from where it ticked down, the sun rising away from the moon below it and he stared at the space between the two celestial bodies and wondered if that was supposed to represent the sky. It was beige, off-white, tan. He remembered the sky was blue. That it had been something more like the water basin, but paler, and decorated with frothy white, like spit, but fluffier.

"He gave me a blanket," he muttered. 

"Hm?" 

He walked all the way over to where he had stashed it on top of the chest and shook it out, and showed Bad who considered it with less enthusiasm than he thought the other should. 

"That's nice." 

"Yeah…" 

"Do you not have a bed though?"

He looked around and shrugged.

"I mean… I guess you don't need one if you don't want one. Do you want one though?" 

His brow furrowed and he held the blanket to his chest. "Want what?" 

"Nevermind, it's not a big deal," Bad trailed off. "Uh… So, does Sam treat you well?" 

~~Sam~~ wasn't his name. The Warden didn't let him call him that. But he supposed everyone else could still say it. 

"He does, yeah…" 

That wasn't a lie. The Warden took care of him and fed him and visited him and talked to him and would help him if he hurt himself. 

Bad nodded. "That's good." 

"It's great." 

The demon eyed him and he disliked the scrutiny. Shuffling in place he walked back to the water basin, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, stared at it, and then wandered back to the clock. 

"Sometimes I throw it in." 

"Into where?" 

He pointed at the lava wall. 

"Oh… What does that do if you throw it in?" 

He huffed out a sharp breath, close enough to a laugh he would consider it one. "He has to come in and give me a new one." 

"So you try to get him to come in here?" 

He nodded, eyes turning back to the clock. "He comes by to give me food sometimes." 

"So, Sam visits pretty frequently?" 

The Warden visited almost every day. Sometimes there were gaps. Sometimes he didn't get a potato for the day. Sometimes he got more than one. There wasn't an exact pattern to it. But there were certain times he would come to visit if the Warden _was_ going to enter his room for the day. 

And he always watched the clock, waited for those increments everyday and listened for the sound of the bridge. Throwing his clock in the lava had increased the frequency of the visits, turned a day of one visit to two, a day with two to three, and the best days were when he turned a day of three visits to four. Those were very good days. And often the very same days where he got to eat anything besides raw potatoes. He liked those days. He got things like his blanket on those days. 

He hadn't had one of those days in a bit, but… Maybe soon. 

Though, the Warden had mentioned something, something he hoped was never completed, but he wouldn't tell the Warden that. The Warden said it would make his job easier, make it so he could have regular meals. But he didn't care for regular meals if it wasn't someone handing him his food...

"He wants to put in a--" He looked up at the ceiling. "Like a chute for the food."

"So, he wouldn't come in here anymore?" 

He shrugged, but pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, back hunching. "Yeah… but I mean, it'll be automated so..." 

He could always keep throwing the clock in the lava and hope the Warden kept replacing that in person. He could mangle himself every hour until the Warden had to keep resetting him. He could reach into the lava and trip the alarm that would have the Warden marching in and handling the breach. There were other ways to ensure he visited. 

"When he comes in here does he spend any time with you? Do you two get to talk at all?" 

He hummed. "Sometimes..." 

"What'dya usually talk about?" 

Mostly why he was here. Sometimes about his behavior. Sometimes, the Warden would tell him about how no one had come to visit him that day and that stung more than it should. 

"Stuff… Sometimes he doesn't. But he brings-- Sometimes I get stuff. Like this..." He fisted his hand in the blanket and drew it up a bit. 

"Well, that's good." 

He licked his lips, ran his thumbs over the wool blanket and glanced at the floor and back to Bad out of the corner of his eye. "You wanted to… You were going to be a guard too?"

"I was. I still plan to." 

If there was someone else here, maybe they would visit him too. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe… 

"If I was I could bring you games and stuff maybe. Like a plant or something if you really want. Something to liven up the space a bit and all," Bad said.

He frowned, shifted his weight on his feet and flexed his toes against the obsidian, watched the way they squirmed like earthworms, like something grotesque. His room was fine. It didn't need a plant. It was great how it was. He didn't need all of those things. 

"I have my light and my books. I… I have my clock and my blanket." 

"Yes, you do, and those are all very good things, I'm sure," Bad said gently. "Five years in here and I'm sure you'll be wanting something a bit new though, right?" 

Five years? That was a long time, right? Or a short amount of time? How long had it already been? He couldn't name the time. He couldn't place whether it had been days or weeks or months, years. A century… 

He rocked his weight back onto his heels, shifted the blanket over his shoulders until it rasped over the back of his neck. "How long have I been in here?" 

"Oh, uh… I don't actually know exactly. It's been a bit I think." 

"Do they…" He swallowed, eyes flickering over to Bad and retreating for the floor again. "Do they miss me?" 

"Who?" 

"George and Sapnap…" 

He missed them. He missed them like he missed dirt under his toes and the wind in his hair and the pleasant chill of open air and the raspy sound of trees and the way birds chirped and the way laughter carried across an open field and the way the ocean tasted like salt. He missed them like he missed a warm meal, a hug, a smile, an arm slung over his shoulder.

"I think they do-- No, I'm sure they do. They definitely miss you lots." 

He watched the clock. "Why haven't they visited?" 

Bad hesitated for too long. "I'm sure they want to. I'm sure they plan to. They just… haven't yet. But they will. I'm sure they definitely will." 

He frowned. 

"You've been good though? Here? You haven't been giving Sam too much trouble have you?" 

The Warden didn't ever so blatantly tell him things like that. The word good didn't leave him. He would only know if he was based on other actions. Based on the fact he got to eat anything besides potatoes, that he got his blanket, his clock, that he wasn't bruised and bloodied or dying again and again and again and again and-- 

He found himself in front of the lava before he knew where he was. One hand fisted in the blanket, clasping it closed over his shoulders, he reached out with the other, laid his palm flat against the lava and distantly listened to his flesh cook. 

"Dream!" 

A hand wrenched him away from the heat, arms bustled him over to the water basin, and shoved his arm down to the elbow in it. 

"What are you doing? Why would you--" 

He blinked, eyes flicking up to Bad and then back to the water. "You're still here?" 

"What? Yes! I'm-- I didn't leave!" 

"Oh…" 

"Do you-- Do you do that a lot?" 

He shrugged. "It doesn't hurt." 

"What?" 

He drew his hand out of the water, stared at the blisters and charred raised ridges and the way bone had peeked through the thinnest parts of meat. Bad grabbed for his hand, clawed fingers large where they framed his.

"Oh, that looks bad. You-- You, _muffin,_ what were you thinking?" 

"It's not bad." 

"Not bad? That looks _awful._ I'll have to ask Sam for something, you can't sit around with your hand looking like that--" 

"Don't." 

"Don't what?" 

He shook his head, drew his hand back and hid it under the makeshift blanket shawl he had made for himself. It didn't even hurt. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't bad at all. It wasn't. 

"Don't tell him." 

"...I have to. You can't-- It'll get infected like that, Dream." 

"It doesn't matter..." 

He couldn't fully die in here anyway. He would just sweat through infection, black out under the swell of pus and the sepsis, and then wake up right as rain later. He didn't need the Warden to know. It didn't matter. It wasn't a big deal. It didn't need to be brought to the Warden. Bad didn't have to tell the Warden.

A finger gently poked at his cheek and he blinked, shaking his head before settling back on Bad who frowned at him. 

"You get three square meals a day, right?" Bad asked. "You look a bit…" 

"I get potatoes." 

"You mentioned that…" Bad sighed. "You're doing fine in here then? Everything's okay? You're alright with Sam and the cell and the arrangement?" 

He wasn't sure why Bad kept asking. Like it mattered even if for some reason he didn't. This was his room. It was his home. It was where he was supposed to be. He didn't have to like it. It just was.

"It's great." 

"Okay. Just making sure. You'll be spending a long time in here, so… As long as everything's okay." 

"It is." 

Bad paused for a moment. "That's good to hear..."

Every visit came to an end too soon. The sound of the lava receding again had him wishing Bad could stay longer. 

Everytime the door opened he got a glimpse of the rest of the prison, of the room outside his own. Impossibly massive and unfathomable in scale. The lava that sprawled out beyond it an endless ocean of molten rock. It was beautiful and terrifying and he found himself enraptured by it every time he managed to get a glimpse. 

Sometimes, he thought about tumbling head first into it. Sometimes, he thought about how he had snatched Tommy back from the ledge, told him it wasn't his time to die yet, and that maybe, now, he would have watched the kid jump. 

Hell, he probably would jump with him. 

Bad left with a wave and he didn't lift his own arm fast enough to return it, the motion foreign. The Warden never did that when he left. 

He watched the bridge recede, watched what glimpses he could of the two speaking, tried to hear what he could over the constant rumble and hiss of lava, and could pick up nothing besides his own ragged breathing. He hoped Bad hadn't told the Warden about his hand. He wouldn't turn down the Warden coming to see him, but he didn't want the disapproval.

He had been doing really good lately...

The lava slipped back over the entrance and he settled back on his heels, crouched and waited and watched and barely breathed. He didn't realize he had nearly torn the blanket until he heard the weave popping, snapping, and he released the tension he had choked into it. 

He could imagine their conversation so vividly he might as well have been there. The Warden frowning up at Bad, the demon's brows still pinched with that little stamp of concern, Bad talking with his hands, punctuating his point with clawed fingers and dark palms. He could imagine the Warden escorting Bad out of the prison, the twisting winding hallways, the fuzzy labyrinth pattern of them, the switches and the levers and the fail-safes he had helped develop, had helped place. 

He couldn't imagine what happened the moment Bad left that last nether portal though. He couldn't figure out whether the Warden would retire his rounds for the day, if the injury Bad would have described to him was even worth his time, or if he needed to come in and handle his ward immediately. 

The silence was already suffocating, already too loud, head pounding and vision less than sharp where he focused on the lava wall and watched the glow ebb and die, the slow coughing flicker, like an ever-dying firefly. 

_'Don't burn yourself like that again or I won't bring your clock back next time.'_

He snapped up to his feet, picked at his hand, wondered what he should do. He looked at the clock, watched _Do Not Burn_. He didn't want to lose the clock. He hoped Bad hadn't said anything, but the likelihood he had told the Warden about putting his hand in the lava was high. Guaranteed even. 

Pacing he wondered from the basin to the chest to the lava wall and back. Wondered which one he should use to reset himself so that the Warden wouldn't see the angry waxy melt to his palm and fingers. He hovered at the lip of the water basin, considered drowning for so long his throat felt like it was closing up and he gagged, bile sliding up and coating his tongue. 

He couldn't lose the clock. He hadn't meant to burn himself. It just happened. It had just happened. He shouldn't have done it in front of someone. He thought Bad had left. Some part of him had sworn the other had left. He hadn't meant to do it. He--

If he hadn't meant to do it, then the Warden couldn't be too harsh on him. It hadn't been his intention to-- Well, it had been. He had wanted to feel the gooey slide of it against his fingers, feel the arcing lance of white-hot pain slide up his arm and curl up under his sternum like adder's teeth. He had wanted to feel _something_. 

He crouched, scrubbed at his face, bit into the side of his finger, worried the appendage between his teeth and thought about clamping down until it snapped off. He held it there, turned to slotting his thumb between his lips instead and pressed down on his tongue. A perfect mirror image of what the Warden had done a bit ago. Pressed until his jaw hurt, until he had to swallow his spit or accidentally inhale it. Until it pooled over the rim of his lips and he felt frothed at the mouth, feral where he pulled his hand free and clenched and unclenched his fingers. 

Drool slicked his hand, trailed down his chin and he hung his head and watched it splatter unseen against the obsidian. He worried his thumb at the seam of his lips and thought about doing it all over again. 

_'Don't burn yourself like that again or I won't bring your clock back next time.'_

Shaking his head he got to his feet and paced, plucked at the burnt bits of his hand and considered the water basin. He reached for it, hooked one leg over the lip, and slid into it with the rocking slosh of water. It would take him a few minutes to drown. He had timed it once, the monotonous distant echo of the clock ticking and counting the seconds had helped him. 

He would need a few minutes to reset and then it would be fine. He could just tell the Warden that Bad had seen things, that he had made it up. That he should believe him, and not the other. 

Submerging himself was far too easy, holding himself under was harder. He still hadn't perfected a system, and he ended up bracing his arm up under where the lip overhung into the wood frame, other clamped over his mouth, covering his nose and lips like that would help him along. He couldn't bring himself to breath out yet, he had to wait. Wait until the pressure built behind his eyes and down his spine and under his ribs, until his blood felt near to boiling over, until-- 

A hand closed around his forearm and he gasped out every bit of air in a silent yelp as he was tugged free from the water. So harshly he tumbled from the basin and onto the floor in a sickening flip that ended with his head cracking against the obsidian. He blinked against the spots in his vision, tried to heave himself to his feet, at least get his palms under him, but they slid and the burnt one gave under him. His chin struck the stone and he tasted blood. 

Fingers closed around his wrist, yanked him around by it, up to his feet, and he wobbled, knees unstable and head bobbing. 

"What's this?" 

He tried to tug out of the bruising grip, eyes locked on his feet. 

"You burnt yourself again?" The Warden asked and he shook his head. "And you were going to try and hide it from me?" 

He shook his head again and wrenched at the fingers, tried to pry them off. His neck hot, cheeks aflame with the way the Warden scolded him like a child. 

"I thought we had gotten past this... If we have to start from square one again, we will." 

The Warden released him and he pressed his arms tight to his chest, hid the injured one under the other and looked at the floor. 

No. No. They didn't have to do that. Square one was bad. Starting over was bad. He would lose all of his things. Everything he had slowly earned. His books, his basin, his glowstone, his clock, his blanket. He would lose everything. He couldn't lose everything. He hadn't meant to. He hadn't-- 

He watched the Warden take the clock off the wall and he had never felt dread quite like he did the moment he watched it snap into two. The Warden dropped the shattered corpse and he scrambled for it, fell to his knees and cradled the pieces in his hands. 

"I can always bring you a new one, but you have to cooperate with me. You know this already..." 

He stared at the clock and he couldn't tear his eyes away from the little moon and the little sun. "How-- How... What do you… What do I need to--" 

"Don't touch the lava. Don't go near it, don't stick your hand in it. Don't try to swim in it. Honestly, just pretend it doesn't even exist."

He nodded, holding the pieces of _Do Not Burn_ close to his chest. 

"Yeah?" A hand tousled his hair. "See, it doesn't have to be that hard. If you'd just listen to me the first time it wouldn't have to be like this." 

He tracked the Warden's movements, eyes glued to him, and went rigid when the Warden picked up his blanket. No. No. No. _No. No. No_. He had just gotten that. He had just gotten that. He had just-- 

"I'll bring this back later." 

How long was later? How long was that? He wouldn't be able to tell without his clock. He wouldn't be able to tell. He wouldn't be able to tell. He wouldn't be able to-- This had all gone so wrong. It had been good. It had been good. Someone had visited him. Someone had finally visited him after Tommy. He had finally had a visitor and then it had gotten all messed up. He had messed it all up. 

"Please..." 

He hadn't said please the whole time. Had never truly let it leave him until now. Hadn't thought to debase himself so fully. But he needed that blanket. He _needed_ it. 

The Warden held it out. "Do you think you deserve this?" 

He thinned his lips, eyes turned to the ground beneath his knees. He didn't. He knew he didn't. He wasn't stupid. He knew he had fucked up. That he didn't get things when he messed up. He didn't. But he wanted the blanket. He wanted it. He-- 

"If you can learn to listen, I'll give it back. I'll even bring you a bed too. That'd be nice, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have to sleep on the floor anymore." 

The Warden crouched, stooped down to eye level with him and he stared at the gold breastplate, unwilling to tip his head up to see his eyes. 

"Okay?" A hand gently canted his chin up and he held the Warden's gaze for a second before hiding it against the far wall over his shoulder. "We're not enemies here..." 

He nodded and swallowed thickly, fingers curling around the clock, burned hand screeching against the splintered wood, the pinpricks sliding under his skin and slotting into the flesh of his palms. He wanted to drive it all deeper, slam the clock into his sternum until the pieces became part of him. Instead, the Warden gathered up the remains, folded them into the blanket, and slotted them under his arm as he stood. 

He couldn't get to his feet. He couldn't stand in the wake of losing both of his clock and his blanket in an instant. 

"Can you reset it yourself or do you need me to do it?" 

"It'll heal… it'll…" He fumbled for the words. 

"It won't. And it's probably not comfortable to sit around with it like that. If you need me to, I can help you," the Warden said, nearly pleasantly, nearly kindly, and he didn't know what to do with that. "You just have to let me know, okay?"

He opened his mouth, closed it, kneaded at his jaw and dug his nails into his chin. 

If ~~Sam~~ the Warden left him he would be alone. He would be all alone. No blanket. No clock. He needed the clock, but he didn't deserve the clock. He hadn't listened. He hadn't listened to him. 

He shook his head, wrapped a hand around his throat and hunched over, breath turned ragged and eyes flicking over the obsidian. He shouldn't have burned himself. He shouldn't have touched the lava. He wouldn't do it again. He wouldn't-- 

It didn't even exist. The hellish tint, the firebrand glow, that wasn't real. It definitely wasn't. He barked out a coughing, huffing whine. It was easy. He could do what the Warden told him to do. He could forget the lava was there. It was easy. It was easy. It was-- 

Fingers gently guided his hand away from where it had clawed into his own neck and he stared, empty-eyed, gaze trained on the armor in front of him. A collar of flesh and bone and digits replaced his own and his breathing evened, slowed, and he swallowed thickly. The tension unwound from his shoulders and his eyelids fell until only a sliver of light meandered through his lashes. 

The rasp of skin against his was _dangerous, welcomed, unwanted_. The hand on his throat settled there, larger than his own, wrapped further around the curve of it than his own fingers could reach, settled against his pulse and he listened to the thud of his heart in his ears. 

"Do you need my help, Dream?" The fingers tightened, flexing with the question and he shivered. 

His lips parted and he could only breath, all the words turned to shallow exhales and slow inhales. He wanted to press further into the palm, far enough he never forgot what it felt like to have another person touching him. He thought about arms thrown around him, about the rumbles of laughter stuck under a sternum, he thought about the warmth of an embrace and not the heat of lava or obsidian or fresh blood. 

"I guess you don't need my help after all…" The Warden started to withdraw, nails scratching lightly along the edges of him as he did. 

He grabbed the hand before it left completely, wrapped his fingers around the Warden's forearm, clung on so tightly his arms shook and his knuckles whited. 

"I--" He licked his lips, eyes darting up and then back down. "I do need your help." 

The Warden didn't immediately reclaim his position and he nearly yanked the hand back into place, nearly wrapped the thing around his own throat, nearly used his own hands to drive the fingers so far into his jugular he spit blood. Instead, he waited, eyes trained on the shine of gold where it dripped and shined and ate up his vision. 

"What do you need help with then?" 

His hands spasmed around the Warden's arm. He knew. He knew. He already knew. He just needed him to-- It was just a reset. It was just another pseudo death. He just needed to _die_. He stared at where smears of red, tainted crimson had smudged against the greyish green of the Warden's arm. His hand burned. Burned like he had run it over grains of salt, had mashed the mineral into the pits of the wounds. 

He needed the Warden to kill him. He _needed_ the Warden to kill him. He needed him to wrap his hand around his throat and snap his spine and crush his windpipe. 

"This..." He held his hand up, palm out, the burns on display for the Warden to see. 

The Warden withdrew his arm completely, the appendage slipping out of his grip and leaving behind nothing but the cold. The rustling click of armor had him glancing up to see the Warden standing again. 

"Stand up." 

He scrambled to his feet. 

"Put your back to the wall." 

He backed up until his shoulders struck obsidian. Waited with his arms limp at his sides, the sting of the injured one nipping up and down his forearm. 

"Don't move." 

He went stock still, spine straightening, skull thudding lightly against the stone as he tipped it back. Knocked his heels back into the obsidian and didn't even tremble. 

"Look at me."

He tore his eyes from the far wall and centered back in on the Warden, on gunmetal dark irises and the passive blank expression, the nearly bored and disinterested look he usually had. He held the Warden's gaze. 

Ignored the spiders crawling their way down his spine and over his shoulders and the way sweat beaded on his neck and the way his mouth went dry. He wanted to look away, bury his line of sight back into the wall, but he had been given an order. He could listen. If he listened maybe he could keep his blanket and get a new clock and-- 

The Warden stepped up close, close enough he knew this wasn't a routine manual search or an assessment or an interrogation. And he stared up at him, held his breath for how hard it was to not look away. 

His fingers trembled. Shoulders tensing with the need to fidget, to move, to tug at his own skin and tap at his own teeth, to bite down on his own palm, to shove it into the lava, to mash his fingers into his own eye socket, to scrape at his skin until it wept, to do anything besides stand so still he felt like he was clattering into pieces. 

He twitched, fingers nearly tapping against his palm, and caught himself before the Warden could see he couldn't follow a simple order. He ran his tongue over the back of his teeth and wished he could bite clean through it. 

The Warden didn't touch him or grab him or move to do anything. He just stood there, inches from him, the warmth emanating from him tangible and his vision swam and wavered and unfocused around the single point of the Warden's eyes. He wished the Warden would do something. His skin crawled, near to unraveling itself at the seams, his bones felt itchy, the back of his eyes near to boiling, the entirety of him one giant rash and he couldn't even scratch at it. 

This was torture. This was punishment. This was hell. 

"Is something wrong?" The Warden asked. 

He huffed, wrinkled his nose, ground his teeth and listened to the _clack_ grind of that in his ears. 

"Help me or leave," he bit out before he had truly thought over the weight of his words or that he wasn't supposed to bark like that. 

The Warden sighed. "Do you want me to leave?" 

He shook his head and stopped mid shake when he remembered he wasn't supposed to move. "No." 

"Then how do you want me to help you?" 

He didn't have to spell it out for him. He shouldn't have to explain it. The Warden had done the same thing a dozen times now. It was easy. It was all too easy. The Warden knew exactly how to help with the way his hand felt like it was still half submerged in lava and his brow had grown slick with sweat, skin chilled. 

"Kill me." 

"How?" 

His brow furrowed. Why did he want him to choose? He couldn't even think of how he would do it himself. Let alone how the Warden _should_ do it. He didn't know how to choose that. It was automated. It was supposed to be as automated as the way a hand around his neck was as natural as obsidian and lava and the rolling, throaty chimes of the elder guardians. 

"I don't know." 

The Warden's eyes pinched and he remembered why he hated making eye contact. "You don't know?" 

"No…" 

The Warden loomed closer, close enough all he could smell was sulfur and mechanical grease and sweat and gunpowder. Close enough it would only be a single hair's breadth and the Warden's silhouette would meld with his own. He wanted to shake his hands out, scratch at his wrists, instead he dug his nails into the obsidian wall behind him and focused on not moving and maintaining eye contact and keeping his back to the wall and following all the orders he had been given. 

"I can choose for you. Do you want me to do that?" 

His gaze flicked down for a second and he flinched and he hissed through his teeth and hated that he couldn't just listen when he needed to. He had lost his clock because he couldn't just listen. He couldn't just listen. Why couldn't he just listen? Why couldn't he-- 

The Warden had asked him a question. He needed to answer him. He needed to answer him-- 

"Yes…" 

The quiet, amused huff of breath was unexpected and he blinked at the sound, didn't miss the way the Warden's impassive mask cracked for a moment, into the smallest quirked hint of a smile before falling flat. He didn't care for all of that as much as the fact that the hand had returned to it's perch on his throat and the little burble of contentment under his sternum flared and flickered. 

It snaked around, slow and with the rasp of blunt nails to the back of his neck and his brow furrowed. He stared at the Warden's eyes, tried to read anything in them, and they were like lumps of blasting powder, dull and inert; a single wrong move and they could spark into a deadly chain reaction. 

The fingers tightened around the back of his neck, thumb pushing into the tendon on the side of it and he tensed. The Warden stepped back, pulled him along with him, nudged him forward until he was walked in front of him, the hand a tether and a lead and he felt like he was being prodded ahead on a leash. 

His hands caught himself on the rim of the large water basin as he nearly stumbled into it, midsection and hips pressed into the lip of it as he was pushed forward, past where he could physically walk. He stared down at the water, realizing in one crushing blow what the Warden had chosen. He tried to lock his elbows, nails dug into the sides of the basin as he pushed back against the unrelenting grip, as he tried to dig his heels in and wriggle his way out of this. 

"You prefer this one don't you?" 

He shook his head. He did when it was himself and his only option and he couldn't exactly choke himself to death with his own hand as easily as drowning, but he had thought the Warden would just wrap his hands around his throat like he usually would. Not this. 

He remembered the way Tommy had told him he had woken up, drowning. The way the kid tried to hide that it had scared him, losing that kind of control, of not knowing if he would make it to the surface before he couldn't swim anymore. 

His arms trembled, inaction rendering him less than stalwart, malnutrition sapping whatever strength he used to have into nothing, and he found himself bent in two and blinking against water before he could even protest. He bucked up, twisted, flailed, tried to pry the hand off the back of his neck with slickened fingers and scrabbled at it with blunted nails. Nothing budged and he couldn't hear anything besides the hollow roaring echo of water and blood in his ears and the way his heart stomped and trampled around in its frantic kicking. 

He held his breath. Held it so long his head felt like it might pop, his chest near to rupturing, limbs tingly and immaterial and lit like wicks at the ends as he scrabbled at the edge of the basin and pushed against it until he started to fumble. Until his fingers turned numb, until he couldn't keep the air in him any longer and he gasped, only to inhale water.

It stung, it hurt, _it hurt_ , and he spasmed, lungs moving to cough up something he couldn't as they filled and filled and he sagged against the lip of the wood beneath him, knees giving, legs useless under him.

Distantly, he registered the hand soothing down his ribs, the thumb brushing over his neck, the Warden pressed up behind him far too close and far too warm. He blinked once-- considered for a moment how quiet it was down here-- and didn't open his eyes again. 

Black. 

Black eyes. 

Black stone, black walls, black-- 

He shot up from the floor shivering and shaking and it was dark. Darker than it had been in a very long time. The lava the only thing casting a warm ambient glow against the obsidian.

The soft _plip-plip_ of water had him reaching for his hair. It was still water-logged, his jumpsuit soaked through down to his chest. He scrubbed his hands over his face, kneaded the heels of his palms against his eyes, and pushed until colors burst behind his eyelids. 

"Get up."

His breath hitched and he shot to his feet so fast his head spun. He wobbled and managed to catch himself, the world tilting on its axis despite the way it looked stable where he squinted at flat obsidian and empty walls. He glanced towards where the voice had come from, eyed the figure in his peripheral. The slight reddish-orange glow cut along the contours of the Warden, shimmered against the golden armor in a nearly practiced dance. 

He flexed his hands, fingers tapping against his palms, and it didn't sting or burn or itch. The wounds all vanished, like they had never happened in the first place. His throat stung though, more phantom than real. The sensation of water sliding down and right into his lungs making him shiver with the urge to cough. The press of invisible fingers into the back of his neck and his side sent him trembling where he stood and eyed the Warden like a broken limbed hare that had been spotted by a wolf. 

The dull thud of armored boots sent him twitching, sent him gripping at his own thighs and steeling his jaw, and pretending like he didn't want to hunch in on himself. The Warden stopped in front of him and he kept his gaze trained somewhere around his chin and throat and everywhere except his eyes. 

Fingers brushed over his forehead, ran through his hair and over his scalp in a slow examination. Spidered their way behind his ears and under his jaw, down the sides of his throat, pressing and palpitating as they went. He remembered the few times he had ever been sick, when he had gotten checked over and his lymph nodes prodded at, the hands as impassive and clinical as they were now. 

But here it felt like acid had been brushed onto every inch of skin they passed over, like his skin was melting off where the Warden touched him. 

Nails pinched into the hinge of his jaw, harsh enough he opened his mouth and let the hand tilt his head from side to side, didn't flinch back from the thumb dragging down his bottom lip. 

He wasn't sure what the Warden was looking for, but he didn't miss the way the glowstone had been taken away, the way he didn't hear his clock on the wall, the way he didn't have his blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He didn't miss the soft, maddening _plip-plip-plip-plip_ of water still dripping from the lip of the basin, or the way the nail digging into the gums of his teeth stung like sharpened steel. 

He nearly asked the Warden what he was doing when his bottom eyelid was pulled down, but all too suddenly the hands were gone and his skin was left cold and sweltering. 

"You're malnourished," the Warden said evenly, monotone where his voice had been warm before his head had been pushed underwater. 

He ate what he was given. He definitely did that much. Not enough probably, but he did that at least. That wasn't his fault. He couldn't get blamed for that one. He couldn't. 

"Once I get the automated system up you can eat on a more regular schedule." 

If it was still going to be potatoes and more potatoes he was going to vomit them up until he died and then do it all over again. He didn't think the Warden wanted to hear that though. He missed green. Green foods. Foods with color. He was tired of the same thing. The same texture. It felt like pus between his teeth and tasted about the same. 

"If you don't hurt yourself for the next three days I'll consider bringing your clock back," the Warden explained. "And I'll be back every day to make sure you haven't done anything." 

Three days. Twenty-four hours per day. Sixty minutes per hour. Sixty seconds per minute. He could break the time up into sixty second intervals then. Count them in his head. His clock made it easier to keep track of time, but he could keep track too. He just had to count the seconds. He just had to keep track of them and then when he got to three days worth of seconds, he would have his clock and it would be okay again. It would be okay again.

The Warden left finally. 

Left him standing in the center of the cell, half water-logged and without his clock and his blanket and his light. The lava snapped shut over the entrance and he didn't turn to look at it, didn't move for a series of breaths, time slipping away from his grasp without the measured _tick…tick...tick…_ to help him keep track of it all.

He wanted to itch at his wrists, wanted to dig his nails into the soggy skin and pull out the ropy, rotten tendons that sat there and _ached._

He only had to make it three days. It was only three days. He had to keep track of three days. He had to keep track of it. He needed to keep track of it. He needed to-- 

"One… two… three… four…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three days of very bad times for Dream next chapter


	4. i can feel the gaps like they're missing teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Are you coming home?  
> You've been gone all week  
> I can feel the gaps like they're missing teeth  
> You're the one who keeps me up  
> But when you're gone it's all just  
> Black walls black sheets black eyes black clothes  
> Black cars black streets black skies black holes  
> I'll be the one that's giving up"
> 
> _Missing Teeth_ by Wishing

He made it through two hundred intervals of sixty seconds before the walls started melting. Only twelve thousand seconds-- one seventh of a twenty four hour cycle-- before insects burrowed around under his skin. 

He couldn't see them, couldn't pinpoint where they crawled into and through him, but he _knew_ they were there. He could _feel_ them. Hunched in the corner, spine crushed against the stone and fingers clawed into his hair; he thought about digging his nails into every corner of himself until he plucked them all out. 

But then he thought about his clock, and his blanket, and the Warden's disappointment, and he curled further into himself. He couldn't dig them out, he shouldn't dig them out, he _wouldn't_ dig them out, even if they gnawed and stung and ate him from the inside out. Even if it felt like they were behind his eyes and in his ears with the raspy, shifting crunch of cartilage and skitter of spindly, spiny legs. 

He had counted twelve thousand seconds before he had lost track and if it had been another twelve thousand already, he couldn't tell. He didn't really care either. Not when there was something biting at the back of his hand. He wanted to slot the skin there between his teeth and tear until he saw whatever it was in all its bulbous and grotesque writhing, but the Warden said he couldn't. 

He had to listen. He had to listen. He had to-- 

Tugging at his hair he focused on the way his scalp burned, the way it felt like, if he kept pulling, he would rend entire chunks of his skull off with it. The weeping of the crying obsidian didn't help any of it, he could hear it behind him, the slow _drip-drip-drip-drip-drip_. It made him want to press his nails into his ear drums and pop them, and the insects eating him alive from the chest outward had him contemplating the sharp edge of the cauldron basin with all the reverence of a single drop of water in a desert. 

The Warden would never find out if he just-- 

No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

He couldn't make the Warden angry, he _shouldn't_ , he didn't want to disappoint him. He needed his clock back. He needed it. He needed the Warden to come back too. If he kept not listening to what the Warden said he might have more things taken away. The books, the chest, the basin. The Warden might never come back if he found him covered in his own blood. If he even suspected he had done something, he might never come back. He might never-- 

No.

He had to make sure the Warden came back and his clock came back and his blanket and the glowstone and-- He had to. He had to, but-- 

No.

He itched at his wrists, rubbed them against one another, and palpated them, searched with the pads of his fingers for any indication of the maggots and the beetles, but he couldn't find them. Patting at his neck and his shoulders, he still couldn't find them, but there was something, there was definitely _something_. It itched and scratched and burned and he needed it out. 

The Warden couldn't blame him if he found evidence. If he showed him why he had picked at his arms until they wept. If he just found even one carapaced little body, he could hand it over and the Warden couldn't be angry at him. Because he had to do it, he had to do it, _he had to._

But there was nothing. 

He fumbled with his jumpsuit, wrenched it off his arms and down to his waist and searched over his torso and his sides and what he could reach of his back, and still nothing. Nothing on the surface at least. He could try and dig down, right over where it felt like his ribs had turned into an anthill, all pock-marked and full of holes. It would be easy to search around in the small cavities between each bone, to scoop out every little six-legged invader. 

He pressed a finger against his side, slotted in the dip between two ribs, kept pushing until his nail bit at the skin and further and--

_'If you don't hurt yourself for the next three days I'll consider bringing your clock back.'_

He flinched away and shook his head, dug his fingers into his arms and hunched over himself, shivering despite the constantly heated cell. Fumbling with the jumpsuit he slid it back on, buttoned it back up, stared at the faded, burnt orange under his hands and tried not to think about the lava the Warden had told him to forget about. He really tried not to, but the glow of it was soft against his palms, gentle caresses of light in the dark where his glowstone had been taken from him. Eyes darting up to it, he tried to not see it, tried to not hear it, or smell the acrid burn of heated air from it, but it was there. It was there and he couldn't just forget about it like the Warden had told him to. 

He clawed his fingers into his arms and shook his head again. Tried to dislodge all the disobedience, but the chewing and eating sound grew in his ears, the sensation under his skin growing, like fingernails itching at the undersides of him, all rusted screws and swelling, waves of broken glass and-- 

He knocked his head back against the wall. The stone ungiving beneath it and the thud echoed in his ear as the whole of him all but rattled. The pain at the back of his skull sharpened and dulled like an old blade and he rubbed at it, palpated at it and prayed it wouldn't rise into a welt.

The insects had stopped at least. 

He stared at the obsidian beneath his feet, face slack, eyelids heavy. He couldn't hear _Do Not Burn_ on the wall, and the floor kept shifting under his feet, but never moving, and he stared at the spot on the wall his clock used to be on and he swore he heard the slightest _...tick…_. 

Stumbling to his feet, he strained his ears, brow scrunching.

_...tick…_

The wall was rough and smooth and sharp and dull under his palms when he ran his hands over it, nails searching the seams. 

_...tick…_

It was here. It had to be. He wouldn't hear it if it wasn't. He could hear his clock. It had to be behind the wall though. It was behind the wall somehow. He didn't know how it had gotten there, but it had. 

_...tick…_

He scrabbled at the obsidian, the smooth stone sliding under his fingertips as he tried to pry a hand hold into it and only ended up chipping off a tiny sliver that nearly slid it's way into his skin. His breath hitched as he plucked the very edge of the volcanic glass out of his finger. 

That had been close. He couldn't damage himself, even accidentally. He couldn't hurt himself or the Warden wouldn't want to come back… 

_...tick…_

He shook his head and resumed his efforts. When he garnered zero results with just his fingers, he searched for something better. Opened the chest and rummaged around, tossing aside books, the ink bottles and quill clinking and clicking. He settled on a hardcover journal, one he had already partially written in. It wasn't the best tool, but if he could chip off a big enough chunk of obsidian he could use it. 

_...tick…_

The obsidian proved stalwart in the face of the book, only brittle at the edges, where the black mineral jutted out in low slopes from the wall. He chipped at it until he heard a sizeable clatter. Tossing the book aside he snatched up the piece. It was like a small dagger, longer than the width of his palm and fatter than a finger. The edges razor sharp where it had split from the face of the block. 

Crouching, he ripped at the ankle of his jumpsuit, tore at the hem until it popped and the thread snapped, until he had wrenched a strip from it. The Warden had said he couldn't hurt himself, but had never given him stipulations on the thing he had been given to wear. 

He wrapped the fabric around one half of the obsidian sliver, until it had blunted the edges, until it no longer threatened to slice open his palm. For a moment, he considered the end of it, swallowed thickly at the dangerous glint. Remembered in vivid, snapping recollection how it felt to have the end of something similar wrenched from one side of his stomach to the other. The Warden's hand holding him steady against him by the throat as he gutted him, and the way parts of him had spilled out in a slopping heap, over his hands and onto the floor and-- 

_...tick…_

He blinked. If he didn't try to hurt the Warden with it, if he hid it after he finished the task, that wouldn't happen again. It was just a tool. It wasn't a weapon here. He wouldn't try to use it against the Warden, so the Warden wouldn't use it against him if he found it. He wouldn't. 

The wall didn't give like he hoped it would. It chipped off in tiny flecks that threatened to stick in his skin and his eyes and that plipped against the floor. The ticking grew louder, loud enough it sounded like it was right next to his ear and he hadn't even made any progress, his limbs always one step from numb, fingers always on the very edge of fumbly. 

_... tick….tick…tick….tick…_

He chipped at the wall until the obsidian crumbled under his hands, until he scrabbled at it and it threatened to bend his fingernails back. The clock was behind the obsidian somehow. It was just behind the wall, but he couldn't-- He needed to get to it but he--

His foot slipped in the growing collecting of obsidian flecks littering the floor and he hissed, sucked in a sharp breath as they nipped and slid home into the soles of his feet like adder's teeth. Hands shaking he crouched down, ran his fingers over the bottom of one and drew back to see smears of red maring them. 

The Warden wouldn't be happy. The Warden would be disappointed. The Warden would be disappointed in him. He had hurt himself and that wasn't good. It wasn't good. He hadn't listened. That wasn't good. He hadn't-- 

Sweeping up the remainders of the shards into his palms he clambered for the chest and dumped them inside, returned to collect the rest, and plucked out the stray sliver that snaked its way under his skin. Clutching at the minor wound, he stemmed the blood flow and tried to estimate how much time he had before the Warden came back. 

It had been twelve thousand seconds earlier, and now it was probably twelve thousand more. Or triple that. It could be nearing the midday point on the clock. He wouldn't know. There was no way he could know. The wall was empty still. 

He missed his clock. He wanted his clock back. He needed his clock back. He needed it. He needed it. He had to listen to the Warden so he could get his clock back. He had to listen. He had to listen. He had to-- 

Settling atop the chest, he scrubbed at the soles of his feet, picked out the obsidian flecks and tossed them into the corner behind it. Rubbed at the blood until his palms filmed with a thin layer of red and the faintest tinge of iron stained the air. He washed his hands off in the basin, methodically and slow, avoided his reflection where it wavered and warped and faded under the lack of light. If he stared too long at it, it started to melt, to shift and change and his features would slip around his face, until he couldn't recognize his eyes from his nose or his mouth and ears. 

The water was cool between his palms and he scrubbed at his jaw and cheeks, let the liquid sit against his skin and slowly dry and then did it again. The bottoms of his feet itched and burned against the stone, a constant gnawing and aggravating pressure. Still nothing compared to the insects that had gone dormant, burrowing back into their hives until the next time they were called out to dig around inside of him. 

Staring down at the water, he thought about drowning. 

About breathing in water until his lungs nearly popped, about his throat spasming around anything but air as he clawed at the lip of the basin and tried to push up against the hand holding him down inside of it. He stared and stared and his shoulders hiked up at the sensation of fingers wrapped around the back of his neck and settled over his ribs, at the phantom brush of them over his scalp and under his jaw and the slow ghosting examination of his teeth and gums. 

He worried his own thumb against his lips, dug at his teeth, fingernail catching against the front ones as he tapped it against them. Rocking his weight back onto his heels he repeated the process, from his toes to his heels in a slow measured motion that was more self soothing than useful, as the obsidian floor gnawed at the open cuts littering the soles of his feet. 

The water was still, the surface untouched and vacant, smooth paned glass, not a single ripple or imperfection marred the surface. He sunk his hand beneath the surface, watched his fingers bend and break under the refraction and pulled them free; whole and untouched. The liquid lapped at his fingers, cool and chilled where the cell always crouched a little too close to uncomfortably warm. He dipped his hand in again, held it there, hollowly watched the separation of one plane and another and his skin and flesh the disrupting bridge between the two. 

The distant _ticK... tick...tick_ chattered in his ear, his head twitching to the side with it, tugged nearly on a string that wound somewhere at the base of his skull and tethered itself to the wall. There was nothing there. He knew there was nothing there. He had tried to find something there, and there was nothing. 

There was nothing there. 

He sunk his arm down to the elbow in the water and focused on the slipping, sliding, overwhelming coldness. The ticking stopped. He stared at where he had leaned over the basin to reach further in, his reflection blinking back up at him-- Or not his reflection. It was hard to tell. 

The face staring back up at him was as unfamiliar as a night sky. The stars he could remember, vague and far away, blips of light against black. He knew that. But he couldn't remember constellations, couldn't remember _how_ bright they were supposed to be. Like the faint furrowed scar or the downward pinch of his brows, the bridge of his nose, the hair that he could only truly remember not being that long; like the sky, he couldn't remember if this was what he was _supposed_ to look like. 

The crunching grind of gears sent him turning for the lava wall-- the not lava wall-- the wall he was supposed to ignore-- the wall that disappeared-- the wall he didn't contemplate on, because the Warden stood there finally. He mused at his own fingertips, found them wrinkled and soft, and he wondered, briefly, how long he had stood there with his hand in the water. 

The Warden didn't have his clock or his blanket or his glowstone, but the Warden had a non-descript bundle in one hand, his trident in the other. The netherite glinted noxious purple and he rubbed at his sternum with his knuckles. The speared tines of the trident weren't dipped in blood and gore but he remembered what it looked like when they were. 

"I figured you were tired of potatoes," the Warden said, holding out the bundle. 

He hesitated, eyes darting between it and the trident and the space where the ~~lava~~ hadn't yet dropped to shut off the rest of the world. He picked at the flesh of his fingertips, nails picking off small sections of water-softened skin and musing them against his palm. The Warden didn't move or say anything and he was sure that the Warden had addressed him, but when he glanced down at his own hands he didn't feel as attached to the limbs as he should be. 

The Warden stepped closer and he followed the dull shine of leather boots. He didn't flinch as a hand grabbed his wrist, even if it burned like he had stuck his hand through the ~~lava~~. The white cloth parcel was pressed into his hands and his fingers manually curled into it by the Warden's own. He blinked down at the bundle in his palms and at the slight warmth beneath the cloth. 

"It's just some bread I brought over from Niki's bakery." 

He held it out from himself, cupped between his hands, unsure what he was supposed to do now. He supposed he was meant to eat it while the Warden was here. 

Cross-legged, he sat on the floor and untied the fabric, unfurled it to reveal a loaf of bread, the crust darkened and shiny with a dusting of oils and butter. It crackled under his thumb as he pressed it into it and watched it give. It was light and fluffy and nothing like hard starch. 

The loaf tore under his hands easily and he inspected the small bit he had torn off. Mused the spongy, fluffy, raspy texture between his fingers and tried not to show his discomfort at the idea of placing it on his tongue. The Warden had brought him a meal to eat, and it wasn't potatoes, and he should be grateful. 

Glancing up, he noticed the Warden hadn't exactly moved further away. The Warden stared down at him, impossibily tall from this angle, and the light from the ~~lava~~ crouched over his shoulders, the hellish tint framing him like devil's claws had settled there. He met the Warden's eyes in his accidental crawl up the whole of him, and quickly lowered his gaze down to the mask covering the lower portion of the Warden's face.

The Warden didn't always wear the mask, sometimes he could see his whole face, the way his lips always stayed in an impassive line, only ever moving to speak or for the rare occasion he had ever seen the hint of anything besides a straight line. But today he could only see the respirator kit, all mechanical and industrial and unfeeling. 

He preferred it when he could see the Warden's whole face. 

He didn't expect the Warden to mirror him, to sit on the ground and lay the trident beside him, to look any kind of relaxed and unguarded around him. It was…. He didn't mind the company but it was… There was an unease gnawing around the middle of him. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with this dynamic. He tore off another chunk of bread and considered it between his fingers. 

"So… What did you do while I was gone?" the Warden asked. 

Resting the small piece against his lips he tried not to shudder at the dry drag of it against his skin. Slotting it between them was another task in itself, and he nearly spit it back out the moment it ran over his tongue. The taste was-- A lot. And the texture-- The texture made his skin crawl and it felt like insects had wriggled between his teeth. He managed to swallow, just barely resisting the urge to gag it back up, the Warden's eyes nearly pinning him beneath the weight of the fact this was a gift and a courtesy and an offering. 

"I did some thinking..." he finally managed after a moment, voice hoarse, his tongue and throat dry. 

"About what?" 

He huffed out a breath, tore at the bread some more, and rolled it between his palms. "About stuff... I don't know… About my clock." 

"You want it back?" the Warden asked. 

He tried to repeat the same process as before, this time with the balled up bread piece. It went smoother, but the way it turned to mush and melted with his spit was still-- Too much. But he had to eat it. The Warden watched him and he had to at least try and eat it. He did it again. And again. And again. Distantly, he realized he hadn't answered the Warden yet. 

"Yeah, I… I want it back." 

"If you can follow my instructions for the three days like I said, I'll bring your clock back," the Warden said. "You still have over two days to go though." 

He turned the half eaten loaf over in his hands, inspecting every wrinkle and valley in it. "More than two?" 

"Well, it's only been about half a day." 

He blinked, unease creeping up his spine in a slow crawl. 

"Half…" It felt like it had been longer. It had to have been longer. It… It had to have been longer. It had to have-- "Half?" 

The Warden sighed, the sound distorted under the mask as he shook his head. "It's probably hard to keep track in here without it, isn't it?" 

He nodded, slow and small. 

"You'll get it back soon..." 

He tore off another chunk of bread, thought about offering some to the Warden, and reconsidered. His gut turned a bit, used to being empty, the new additions settling unwell in the pit of him. He glanced up to the Warden, considered wrapping it up and handing it all over. He had to eat it though. The Warden was watching him, all empty eyes turned warm under the glow of ~~lava~~.

Another piece of bread settled on his tongue, dried and shriveled and slowly melting into mush as he mused it around behind his teeth. He thought about vomiting, in the distant kind of hollow way that he considered his own hunger, the pains that jabbed at his middle less him and more someone or _something_ else. 

The Warden leaned forward, grabbed the remains of the loaf, and broke it in his own palms, rendered a chunk from it in one movement. He remembered those hands around his throat, his wrist, how they could pop his shoulder out of place and crush his windpipe if they wanted. 

"If you continue to be on your best behavior in here, I can bring you more meals like this," the Warden said, holding out the piece, between two fingers, a more delicate gesture than seemed natural. 

He accepted it, the same process he had gone through a handful of times now feeling slightly more… More… He couldn't place the word, but the way the Warden watched him chew and swallow, it settled over his shoulders and itched. 

"No more potatoes?" He asked, licking his lips where they had dried and chapped. 

The Warden huffed out a laugh, something he wasn't used to hearing at all and that turned his skin warm. "No, you'll still get those as your main meals. This'll just be… Like special occasions." 

"Special occasions…?" 

The Warden held out another piece. "Sure." 

He accepted it. "Like what?"

"When you listen to orders and when you do what you're told and if I think you deserve it," the Warden said, holding out the last chunk of bread in his palm. 

He reached for it, hesitated, thought about debts and costs and things that didn't really matter in here-- And accepted it. 

The final piece nearly found it's way hurled back into his lap. The taste was too much, overwhelming, snapping into sudden focus like knuckles connecting with his cheek. The saccharine, butter, nearly too sweet, too salty, too savory, yeasty-dough-- Indescribable amounts of flavors and tastes and things he hadn't remembered bread ever tasting like flooded him from the root of his tongue up to his sinuses. He tried his best not to gag or heave or show that his stomach was doing its best attempt at spasming around under his diaphragm. 

He swallowed and panted, massaging at his own throat and scrubbing at his face as he tried to compose himself in measured breaths. If he threw up what the Warden had given him, that wouldn't be good. It wouldn't look like he was grateful for the meal. Fisting his fingers into the cloth that had been wrapped around the bread he held it to his sternum and kept his eyes trained somewhere along the floor and the Warden's boots. 

"Finished?" 

He passed over the fabric wordlessly. It was the first time in a while his stomach feel less than full after eating. Nearly too full now, to the point he worried the food might really climb its way back out. If he had a bed, he would have curled up on his side and waited for the aches to pass, but here all he had was stone. 

Distantly, he registered the sounds of the Warden standing, the sudden notion that the Warden would leave digging into his chest like a boot to his sternum. The air rushed out of him in a single exhale as he glanced up and tried to find the words to make the Warden stay. 

He had nothing. 

And the Warden watched him, stared down at him, and he couldn't help but feel like the bug that had been so carefully hidden under the overturned rock. 

"Stand up." 

He stumbled to his feet, arms rigid at his side. The Warden had straightened up again, shoulders back, his brow drawn tighter, fingers knuckled around the trident in his fist and his voice deepened, serious, less of the friendly lilt. Glancing at the trident, he swallowed. 

"Take it off." 

His brow furrowed. "...what?" 

The Warden gestured at him. "Your jumpsuit. I have to make sure you've followed through here and aren't hiding anything from me." 

He-- He didn't really want to do that. He-- "I didn't hurt myself." 

"I can't exactly trust your word on that, can I?" 

"I--" He opened and closed his mouth, hands moving to fist in the front of his jumpsuit. 

He didn't have anything besides the one layer. And he didn't really want to strip that off. What if the Warden took it away like the clock and the blanket too? What if he took it away and left him with nothing? What if he took it-- 

"Take off the jumpsuit, Dream." 

He blinked at the use of the name. Cheek twitching as he clenched his teeth. 

"Come on, you were doing really well. I can still take away your books. I know you like to write in them..." 

He did. He used them to write. He used them to draw. He hadn't used them in a bit. But he liked to use them. He needed to use them more. Though, now without the glowstone light, it was hard. All he had was the ~~lava~~ to see by and he was supposed to ignore that like the the Warden had told him to, so he didn't have a lot of options when it came to trying to use the books and-- 

He worried the heel of his palm against his lips and wished he could sink his teeth into the meat of it. To at least get the tension out from under where it wound under his skin and pulled taut. 

"Dream." 

The unspoken, _'Do you want your clock back or not?'_ settled between them. 

He tore his jumpsuit off, fingers moving as quickly over the buttons as he could, nearly popping one off in the process as he pushed it down, below his ribs and his waist and over his hips until it pooled around his feet. His fingers curled into fists along his thighs, nails pressing into his palms. He kept his eyes sunk into the far wall as the Warden loomed closer. 

His feet were covered by the jumpsuit, if the Warden didn't ask him to step out of it, he wouldn't have to reveal the soles of them and the small cuts he could feel the stone prodding at. His chest rose slowly and fell slower; vision unfocusing around the obsidian as he resisted the urge to snap his gaze up to the Warden's. He wanted to know where the Warden's own eyes were looking. If they were actually roving over him, head to toe, or if that was simply the creeping, tip-toe sensation of phantom spiders along his skin. 

The Warden didn't give him any more orders. He stood there, naked, wondering if he was supposed to lift his arms to show he hadn't picked at the undersides, or if he was supposed to turn around to show he hadn't clawed at his back either. The shiver that worked its way up from his toes to his fingertips wracked through him in a rattling pass that ended with his lip curling in a slight grimace. 

He wished the Warden would just get on with whatever this was. 

The Warden stepped closer, the warmth emanating off of him caressed the edges of him in the unignorable presence of another life besides his own. He held his breath and pressed his arms against his sides even harder. 

The fingers that wormed their under the seams of his arms and beckoned them to lift stung and shocked and bit and the firebrand pinpricks snapped up and down his limbs. His fists went slack as he raised his arms and the Warden's hands slid from forearm to tricep and back in a slow, feathering caress. 

It was-- It was gentle. He could feel the calloused texture to the Warden's fingers and palms, the way skin rasped over his like live wires touching and sparking in licking forks of controlled lightning. It was-- 

A sound bunched and wobbled behind his teeth, slipped down his throat as he swallowed it and held it somewhere under his sternum where his heart knocked against his ribs. He breathed out and forgot to breathe in as the hands roamed down over his ribs and sides, pausing at the small divot he had driven in with his own nail. 

He tensed, waiting for the reprimand, arms trembling where he held them aloft, like a crucifixion, strung up and stuck through with nails he couldn't see, some bastard stigmata where hands held him in suspended torture. The Warden moved past it, without a word, and he let the breath slip from his lips. 

His nose wrinkled, brow furrowing before he could stop it and toes curling against the stone when the fingers passed over his hips and the Warden had crouched with his search, lowered himself and-- When hands nudged his legs further apart, knuckles to the inside of his knee, he had never been more glad to have not been graced with the usual standard set of equipment as the sensation crackled in the dim, toothed roar of a wildfire from his pelvis to the base of his skull. 

The slow, meandering boil of warmth ratcheted into a roil as a hand moved up along the inside of one thigh and then the other. His fingers dug into the sides of his legs and he held onto his own flesh and skin like a lifeline. 

It felt like he was being dissected. Like he was being picked apart slowly and carefully, fingernails wriggling under the seams of his skin and peeling-- And even as the Warden withdrew and stood and stepped away, he still felt as if every inch of him had been dipped into the ~~lava~~ and turned to wax. His muscles wound so tight, jaw clenched and teeth grit, he could no longer tell where one tooth ended and the other began, and the Warden just watched him all the while.

"Turn around." 

He hadn't wanted to bark back at the Warden in so long. 

He needed his clock back and he liked getting different kinds of food, even if they hurt to eat, and he liked the Warden's company, and he wanted his blanket back, but he wanted to bare his teeth and tell the Warden _'no'_. His skin ached, like the whole of him had been raked belly first over coals and heated glass, and he felt close to trembling into fractured little pieces, and he couldn't handle another brush of skin against his again. He couldn't. He--

He slowly turned around, shoulders tensing and hiking up, face heating, the back of his neck warm. There was a measure of vulnerability, humility, and danger in turning his back to the Warden. But he wanted his clock back. He wanted it back so bad the thought of never getting it back felt like the Warden's trident had been striven straight through his gut and ripped up through his ribcage. 

He needed his clock back. 

The Warden didn't touch him. For that, he breathed easier, but the sensation of eyes pinning and clawed into the back of his neck and along the whole of him-- That didn't let the tension in his shoulders unwind. 

"Okay, you can put it back on." 

He huffed out a sharp breath, the small niggling annoyance not something he had felt in a while, and he latched onto it. Grabbed onto it with both fists and clung, because it was better than meandering over the alternative, of picking over the way it still felt like fingers were passing over the skin of his inner thigh and creeping higher and higher and-- 

The jumpsuit settled over him in the all too present rasp of linen and cotton and he pulled at it. Tugged at the sleeves and collar and tried to get it to sit on him in a way that didn't gnaw and itch as he rebuttoned it.

"I need to work on setting up the automatic chute, so I'll be here for a bit." 

He watched the Warden, eyes darting down to his hands, to the bag at his hip, and back up to the mask. "Okay…" 

He felt stretched thin and raw, and he wanted nothing more than to sit in the basin and let the water muffle everything for a moment, but the Warden wasn't leaving. He was going to stay here and while he would have liked a moment to run his own hands over his limbs and scrub off the heat settled under his skin, he didn't mind that the Warden wanted to stay. 

The Warden pulled free tools and items, things he knew names for and others he didn't, and he stood nearby, idle and empty-handed as he watched the Warden work. He found himself centered in on the way the Warden's hands could go from delicately holding wires and routing them, to bending metal and rending plates from one another.

The trident rested on the ground and he considered that as well. He stared at it for longer than he should, imagined driving it through the Warden's throat and pinning him to the wall with it, wondered if the Warden would try to speak around the end driven clean through his jugular or if the Warden would just silently watch him like he usually did. 

"Can I borrow you for a second?" 

He snapped back to himself, away from musings of blood and gore and lips stained red and unmoving. "What?" 

"Hold this," the Warden said, nodding down towards the redstone device he was working on. 

There was a panel with wire connectors running underneath it, the panel itself threatening to flip close the moment the Warden reached in to adjust something. He closed the gap between them, grabbed the chilled metal with his hands, and held it back as the Warden wormed his fingers inside the device and searched for something among the knotted intestinal mess. It was obscene. In the way it felt like the Warden had gutted him and reached into his belly and stuck his fingers through the wormed and squelching insides. 

He swallowed, eyes glued to where the Warden worked, lips parted in a slight pant as he imagined blood spilling over the edges and imagined fingers dug through his middle and remembered hands running up along the inside of his thigh and-- 

"Okay, got it. Thanks." 

He drew back too quickly, the words snipping away the immaterial like shears, and he blinked. Fully expecting his own hands to be bloody and the Warden's as well, but they were both clean. He stared at the beds of his fingernails, and thought about chewing his own fingers, about shoving them through his ribs and down to the pit of him where he could scratch out the imprints of hands with his own.

"Is everything alright?" 

He shook his head and then nodded and blinked, longer than necessary, and glanced up at the Warden. "I'm fine…" 

The Warden hummed, not taking his eyes off his work, fingers moving deftly over the break in the obsidian, where he presumed the chute would end. 

"You write in your books sometimes, right?" the Warden asked. 

"Yeah… Sometimes." 

"What do you write about?" 

"I don't know... Lots of things." 

"Like?" 

"I-- There's… Tommy gave me things to write about after he visited. But his suggestions were… stupid." 

The Warden paused in his work. "Stupid?" 

He huffed out a breath. "Yeah. He wanted me to write about _'why'_." 

"Why what?" 

"I don't know." 

"Why you hurt him?" 

He clenched his teeth.

"You did some very bad things, Dream. You understand that, right? I know we've had this discussion before, but… I want to make sure you know why you're here." 

He didn't say anything. 

"You didn't have to do that to Tommy, he's just a kid. He didn't do anything wrong and--" 

"No." 

Tommy did. Tommy did though. He remembered that. He remembered that much. He remembered George. He remembered George coming to him, ash stained up to his elbows, smelling like burnt wood and charcoal, eyes wide and betrayed and nearly watery. 

Tommy had done something wrong. He had. He had done a lot of things. It wasn't just him. 

"He--" 

"Nothing is worth what you did to him out there." 

He swallowed, tongue heavy. 

"Tommy didn't deserve all of that. You could have just talked to him, sat him down and tried to get through to him." 

_He doesn't listen though. He never listens._

Tommy had fucked him over a thousand times in the past. And he had done the same. Their whole dynamic was less him holding a sword to Tommy's throat and them holding each other at knife point. It wasn't some cat and mouse game. It was cat and cat, and maybe Tommy was younger than him, but that didn't mean Tommy didn't have claws or teeth or the means to bite him back. Tommy wasn't some helpless little kid. Tommy burnt down his best friend's house because it was fun to him. The kid never thought about any actions outside of whether they were entertaining, whether they benefited him. 

And sure, maybe he wasn't in the right, that was fair. That was an entirely fair assessment. 

But Tommy wasn't just a stupid, naive little kid. 

"He's not just a kid." 

"So, you think what you did was okay?" the Warden said, and he didn't miss the way his voice had dipped. 

He wanted to say 'it doesn't matter'. He wanted to say _none of that even matters now_ bad enough his jaw hurt. But he knew he had to say no. The Warden had taught him that enough times. 

"No." 

"Then… Do you regret what you did?" 

He didn't. He didn't know if he could. He didn't really care anymore. He wrote about it in his journals. In snippets and excerpts that read more like the slow creep of madness than anything coherent. 

Sometimes he wrote about how he would kill the Warden and Tommy and himself and everyone in the server if he got out. Sometimes he wrote about how he would just kill himself so they wouldn't have to look at him ever again. Sometimes he wrote about rending the Warden into pieces in all the ways the Warden had wrenched him apart. Sometimes he wrote about how he wanted to be torn apart and scattered across the cell. Sometimes he just wrote about how he wanted to leave. 

He wrote about wanting to leave a lot... 

And sometimes he would write the same question again and again until the words lost all meaning. 

But he didn't write about regret. 

_'Then… Do you regret what you did?'_

No. "Yes." 

The Warden looked at him finally and he actually met his eyes. "You do?" 

"...yes." 

It was what the Warden wanted to hear. He knew that much. He knew it would make the Warden happy. And it would make the Warden more willing to give his clock back, his blanket, to stay and talk to him like a person and less something to be ordered around and barely fed. He didn't like when the Warden regarded him more animal than person. If it meant he had to sit here and lie through his teeth and feel guilt bubble and pop like tar in the pit of him, it was worth the way the Warden's brows drew up and his eyes softened by a fraction. 

He didn't like lying to the Warden, but he had to. 

"I'm glad you admitted you regret it. That's progress." 

He didn't have a response for that, his knees locked and eyes roving over where the Warden had turned to continue his work. 

He just wanted the Warden to come back. He just wanted him to come back. And the chute would make his meals automatic, it would mean the Warden wouldn't have to come back in. And he couldn't hurt himself or else he wouldn't get his clock back, so he couldn't force the Warden to come in and check everything and do a sweep of the cell if he stuck his fist through the ~~lava~~. 

He didn't want to be left alone in here forever though. 

And it wasn't as if regretting it would get him out of here anyway. It wasn't the secret key he needed to leave. Regret was effectively and actually useless. He couldn't change the past. He couldn't rewrite it. It just was. And it wouldn't help him to mull over it. 

He didn't realize the Warden had finished what he was doing until all the tools and wire casings and redstone had been put away. There was nothing he could do or say to make the Warden stay, he knew that.

"Give me your hand." 

The Warden held out his own, palm up and he laid his in the cup of it, skin warm against his knuckles. His hand rested, face up and nearly reverent, in the other'sz and he didn't anticipate the small knife pulled from the Warden's belt, or the way it dragged across his palm, blood welling up from the cut immediately. Red weeped into the valleys and the grooves, spilled over the edges of his hand and into the Warden's. 

It was gentle, where a cloth swiped at the wound, and the Warden cleaned and wrapped the wound with a roll of gauze in a slow wind. The bandages immediately turned burgundy at the center of his hand and he stared at it, fingers prodding at the wrappings the moment the Warden released him. 

"Just a bit of reassurance that you aren't resetting yourself while I'm not here. As long as the cut is still there, I'll know you didn't do something. Alright?" 

He pulled at the gauze, finger wriggling under the edge and tugging. 

"I'll be back tomorrow." 

His attention snapped back up to the Warden and he found himself centered in on his own blood still staining the man's palm.

He couldn't convince the Warden to stay. He would be left alone in here again. He knew that. It was easier when someone was here though. When he had something else to focus on, to talk to. He knew the moment the Warden left he would be sunk back into it, that he would have to work to not crack under the pressure of four walls and his own mind until the next time the Warden returned.

He knew that all too well as he stood by the water basin and watched the Warden leave and the ~~lava~~ close over the entrance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/3


End file.
